{"id":2836,"date":"2023-05-15T18:32:28","date_gmt":"2023-05-15T18:32:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=2836"},"modified":"2023-05-15T19:08:35","modified_gmt":"2023-05-15T19:08:35","slug":"the-uw-must-change-this-practice-now-to-improve-diversity-workforce-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=2836","title":{"rendered":"The UW Must Change This Practice NOW to Improve Diversity & Workforce Development"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/the-uw-must-change-this-practice-now-to-improve-diversity-workforce-development\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\"uw<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time for the UW to value an industry background alongside degree credentials. It\u2019s time to lift hundreds of deserving people of color and women into positions of power.
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If UW System leaders truly care about diversity and inclusion, and if Republican legislators truly care about job training and workforce development for students, I am calling on both to fix the problem I will outline below. Do it now.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

There is a simple step that the UW System\u2019s leaders, Gov. Tony Evers, and Republican legislators could take NOW to immediately improve diversity on campus AND to bolster the system\u2019s workforce development mission, providing a better experience for students, industry, and taxpayers.<\/p>\n

That sounds like a no-brainer. Yet no one is talking about it.<\/p>\n

Right now, state law and university system rules do not mandate<\/strong> that all of the system\u2019s more than 5,500 full-time instructional academic staff share in decision-making authority across the UW System. This should be mandated.<\/strong> In some universities in the UW System, they are expressly banned from doing so because they don\u2019t have tenure or terminal degrees, even though many have master\u2019s degrees, decades of industry experience, teach the most, and have deep industry ties.<\/p>\n

To crystallize this absurdity through example: My university\u2019s journalism program could hire Tom Brokaw or Walter Cronkite (before his death) to teach broadcast journalism, and they would be banned from making decisions on the broadcast journalism classes we offer or which type of instructor we should hire next because they don\u2019t have tenure or PhDs. Instead, the decisions would be made by PhD theorists with tenure who have limited or no television news experience. To put it bluntly.<\/p>\n

Make that make sense.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t. It\u2019s time to get rid of the UW System\u2019s archaic hierarchies that value degree over industry experience. Both should be valued. They should have equal footing. As an added benefit, this change would immediately boost hundreds of instructors of color and women into equal footing in the power structure. It\u2019s a step the UW could take to immediately<\/em> impact structural racism and gender bias.<\/p>\n

If you want to truly reform the UW System to make it more effective for students, more efficient for taxpayers, more diverse, and more connected to employers\u2019 needs, you have to change who is making the decisions, and many of those happen at the department level due to shared governance.<\/p>\n

Right now, at UW-Milwaukee, UW-Madison, UW-Parkside, and UW-Eau Claire, and likely other universities, you need tenure (or a terminal degree) to sit on an executive committee. To get tenure, you generally need a PhD. A terminal degree means a person has achieved the highest possible educational credential in their field. Generally that is a PhD.<\/p>\n

Why this matters:<\/em> Many instructional academic staff have master\u2019s degrees and extensive experience in industry instead; it\u2019s fairly rare for people to have spent decades in the industry and have a PhD. As a matter of disclosure, I am in this category. I have taught journalism full-time at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for about 20 years. I have won the Alumni Foundation\u2019s teaching excellence award, I have a master\u2019s degree, and I have 25 years of industry experience.<\/p>\n

Yet, I\u2019ve been locked out of power-sharing the entire time because I don\u2019t have tenure or a PhD, and I\u2019m far from alone. My story is simply emblematic of the many others in the same position.<\/p>\n

To put this briefly into a political context for Republican legislators, that means that those \u201cso-called liberal, Marxist theorists\u201d they so dislike are making the decisions about budgets and curriculum, in some cases instead of people with industry experience and connections that benefit students who, after all, are paying big tuition bills to get jobs in those industries (note to potential faculty censors, I am not saying all tenured faculty are liberal Marxist theorists or that none have industry backgrounds\u2026I\u2019m boiling it down to make a point.)<\/p>\n

Department executive committees run by tenured professors are extremely powerful due to shared governance that concentrates power in the UW System in committees at the departmental level, giving them even more power in some respects than deans and chancellors. They make many decisions that affect taxpayers and student tuition payers. They allocate budgets. They hire. They fire. They make decisions on the curriculum. Yes, there are higher committees involved, but, at the core, power is concentrated in these department-level committees.<\/p>\n

Now let\u2019s talk about how this impacts diversity. There are also hundreds of instructional academic staff who are people of color in the UW System; yet, at some universities, people in those categories are locked out of power completely, given only an advisory role, even though they often teach the most. There is a significant gender disparity: A larger percentage of women are academic staff than are tenured faculty, so this practice prevents a lot of women from cracking the glass ceiling and sharing in power. Tenured professors are more likely to be researchers. For years, the only instructor of color in our program wasn\u2019t allowed a non-advisory vote on all important departmental matters but taught the most classes and had decades of industry experience. Make that make sense. That instructor left.<\/p>\n

For many, many years teaching full-time at UW-Milwaukee, I was never supervised by a female chair (until recently), and I\u2019ve never worked under a department chair who is a person of color. I\u2019ve watched as executive committee members without backgrounds in industries we teach have made some decisions that are not always in the interest of students and those industries.<\/p>\n

In my program, Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies, the academic staff historically taught more classes because they (ostensibly anyway) don\u2019t have academic research requirements. Our academic staff instructors have decades of experience in the industries they teach. Other instructors worked for decades in the public relations, advertising, and television industries. They interact constantly with students and place them in internships. However, they can\u2019t sit on their program\u2019s executive committee because they don\u2019t have PhDs or tenure. For years, that executive committee was run by theorist professors who, in many cases, had no, outdated or very little industry experience in these fields. This is not meant to denigrate them. Many of them were excellent researchers and theorists in those fields. They spent a lot of their time writing books and conducting research. But it\u2019s different. One of them believed the rest of us belonged at MATC. Some harbored a clear disdain for academic staff\/skills training\/workforce development, teaching skills over teaching theory and research.<\/p>\n

For years, in my department, there was strong disagreement about hiring priorities between the powerless academic staff (mostly women then) and the powerful executive committee members (mostly men then). We wanted an instructor to do video editing or SEO; they wanted an instructor to teach theory courses, for example.<\/p>\n

After years of tension over this fault line, the dean did the right thing and spun us off into a semi-autonomous program that exists under the Communication Department executive committee. This has been working well. I respect the folks in Comm, and they\u2019ve been respectful of our semi-autonomy. They still have the ultimate power, though. The reality remains that the major, final decisions are still being made by tenured professors with PhDs<\/strong> (now in Comm) who have no background at all in the industries we are training our students to succeed in. And that makes no sense. I provide specifics about my program just because it is such a case in point.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s hardly alone.<\/p>\n

A few years ago, I learned that the same challenge existed in an American Sign Language program, at least then, to give another example. The instructors did not have tenure, so they were governed by an executive committee from another department that consisted of professors with no ties to that culture.<\/p>\n

The rules can be complex and confusing.<\/p>\n

University rules do allow a departmental executive committee to \u201cextend the right to vote and participate in departmental meetings to members of the academic staff.\u201d I believe this rarely happens, and at some universities, it\u2019s expressly disallowed. In my university, we sometimes get to sit on faculty committees and vote (but it\u2019s only advisory and different from the true power concentrated in executive committees). And, yes, there are university-wide academic staff committees involved in governance. However, executive committees have the real power.<\/p>\n

This right should not have to be \u201cextended.\u201d In other words, the people with power should not be trusted to share it. Get rid of the hierarchy that values a PhD more than industry experience. Change state law to mandate inclusion of instructional academic staff on departmental executive committees.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I reached out to John Lucas, spokesman for UW-Madison. Can you tell me if people without tenure can sit on UW-Madison executive committees that run departments? I asked him.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey cannot,\u201d he responded.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan people without PHDS?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, however, all faculty at UW-Madison have a terminal degree (not necessarily a PhD),\u201d he said.
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\u201cIf non-tenured people without PHDS (instructional academic staff really) are allowed to serve on departmental executive committees at UW Madison, is that automatic or do they have to be converted or allowed on in a case by case basis?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a process at Madison by which academic staff with or without PhDs are able to participate in departmental meetings. This happens pretty regularly across campus,\u201d he said. (I would note that this happens at UWM too, but this participation is advisory. Executive committees have the final say. So it\u2019s a different point.)
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\u201cIn a practical sense, do many instructional academic staff sit on departmental executive committees at UW-Madison or is this very rare?\u201d I asked Lucas.<\/p>\n

This does not happen.<\/strong><\/p>\n

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee\u2019s July 2022 policies and procedures say,<\/a> \u201cEach department has a Departmental Executive Committee, consisting of all full-time members of the department who are tenured professors or tenured associate professors<\/strong>, and as determined by the Departmental Executive Committee at the time of appointment with tenure, any person holding a part-time appointment as a tenured professor or tenured associate professor\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

The University of Wisconsin-Parkside\u2019s rules say:<\/a> \u201cEach department shall have a Departmental Executive Committee, consisting of all members of the department who are tenured<\/strong> professors, tenured associate professors, and, with the permission of the committee, tenured assistant professors\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

The University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire\u2019s spokesperson told me, \u201cDepartments have Department Personnel Committees<\/strong> that establish criteria and procedures for periodic review and make recommendations on reappointment and granting tenure. DPC Membership is comprised of \u2018All tenured faculty with an assignment of 50 percent or more in the department\u2019 (FASRP, p. 47). A Ph.D. is not necessarily required to be granted tenure, if the DPC affirms that the person holds a \u2018terminal degree\u2019 appropriate for their field based on national organizational standards.\u201d<\/p>\n

I would note that, in my university, a terminal degree has not been a guarantee of inclusion on the Executive Committee. In fact, I\u2019ve seen that denied in the past.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why the discretion should be removed. Instructional academic staff shouldn\u2019t have to fight to share in power. It should be a given.<\/p>\n

State law is a bit vaguer.<\/p>\n

The faculty of each institution, subject to the responsibilities and powers of the board (of Regents), the president, and the chancellor of such institution, shall have the primary responsibility for advising the chancellor regarding academic and educational activities and faculty personnel matters. The faculty of each institution shall have the right to determine their own faculty organizational structure and to select representatives to participate in institutional governance, except that the faculty of each institution shall ensure that faculty in academic disciplines related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are adequately represented in the faculty organizational structure. <\/em><\/p>\n

How are \u201cfaculty\u201d defined? \u201cFaculty\u201d means \u201cpersons who hold the rank of professor, associate professor, assistant professor or instructor in an academic department or its functional equivalent in an institution and such academic staff as may be designated by the chancellor and faculty of the institution.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, practically speaking, at least at some universities, academic staff are rarely lifted into positions of power. In 2021, I tried to dig into this issue and was told by the secretary of the university at UW-Milwaukee, \u201cIf you want to be a department, you will need an EC (executive committee). I cannot imagine you would get permission to form a department without someone having a PhD.\u201d I was also told: \u201cYou cannot be on an executive committee unless you are a tenured faculty member.\u201d<\/p>\n

Very rarely people are converted to tenure-track positions; for example, some academic staff scientists in the School of Freshwater Sciences were converted to tenure-track positions some time ago so they can qualify for the executive committee, but only tenured instructors can sit on the executive committee.<\/p>\n

I asked Mark Pitsch, spokesman for the UW System if you need tenure and\/or a PHD to serve on an executive committee system-wide because it gets confusing. He has not yet responded.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to find departmental websites specifying that only tenured faculty can sit on executive committees. See here. <\/a><\/p>\n

UW Academic staff numbers<\/h2>\n

Systemwide, using the system\u2019s own 2021 numbers, the latest available:<\/a><\/p>\n